I Was a Lost Boy, Too
by margotllama
Summary: Curly, Nibs, Tootles, Slightly, and the Twins weren't the first boys to tumble onto Neverlands shores, and they weren't the last. The story of Kit Conners.
1. Prologue

_Most of the stories you hear about the Lost Boys have them running off from awful homes, bad places and bad people and bad situations. Most of them get beat and starved and such, and they cry for the first few days. _

_Peter gets awful sick of crying, though. He can take it for three or four minutes, but then he just picks you up by your collar and drops you outside until you stop. Then, when you come back in, it's like it never happened. That part's the truth at least. _

_I was a Lost Boy. There's a cycle to them, you know, because even on a magic island, not everyone can be like Peter. The phrase isn't 'all children grow up, save one island.' You grow, slower than most, but you grow. And then, when you get taller than Peter, he stops talking to you and he won't let the other boys either. You can't fit in all the little nooks and crannies and secret cubby ways. Eventually, you go out and mope on the beach, staring out over the waves and wondering 'why me?'_

_That's when Hook comes by and nabs you._

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was a Lost Boy, too. But my story doesn't start in some piss poor orphanage, or a dirty alley way, or a squalid apartment. It doesn't start with abusive parents or cruel caretakers or anything like that.

_No, my story starts in Great Ormond Street Hospital._

_My story starts with a death._

_My beginning starts with an end._

_Ironic, huh?_


	2. Jumping from the Serpentine

My name is Christopher Oliver Simon Paul Conner. I was ten years old when I fell from my 'pram', which you might think is awful old for a Lost Boy. Ten is the turning point, or almost. But I have always been small for my age, and I lied to Peter, when I first met him, and told him I was eight.

My brother was eight. His name matched mine, almost. Same initials. We used to swap handkerchiefs, because Mama had embroidered our initials on them, mine in blue and his in red. But my favorite color was red and his was blue, so we would swap.

The day I fell out of my pram, so to speak, was the day that Charley Orwell Samuel Peter Conner left this Earth from his bed in the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.

My father was an influential man in London in the fall of 1878. My brothers and I used to hide at the top of the stairs at night, all six of us perfectly quiet. We'd push our heads forward, try to get a glimpse. Gregory, he was the eldest, Gregory always saw the most. He could see my father take off his top hat, see his slicked back hair.

But it wasn't like Father ignored us. Never, never ever. He was a busy man, but he used to spend every Sunday with us. We'd all go to church together the Conner boys. We all had names that matched. My eldest brothers, Gregory and George, then me and Charley, then the youngest, the littles, Joseph and Johnnie. Father called us his 'strapping lads', his favorite boys. We'd all go to church and then he would take us to Hyde Park, to play by the Serpentine and occasionally venture into Kensington Gardens. This was not so long before Barrie's tales of Peter Pan and Solomon Crow, but the pirates were there all the same. We sailed boats on the Round Pond and at least one weekend a month one of us (normally George, who was solemn and serious) would walk home and get a good talking too from Mama and Mamselle Roiux for soaking his Sunday suit. Father would just grin.

During the week, though, he was far too busy to play. He worked for the Prime Minister, my father, and my Mama was just one woman. She couldn't handle six boys, so she handled us over to Mamselle Roiux.

She was kind, for a governess. She never yelled at us without cause. She was a brisk, slim woman with red cheeks and a French accent that twisted and wove throughout her words with a decided appeal. Mama had hired her because Mama was French, and they would jabber away in it when Father was out. He didn't care for it when he was there. He didn't like not knowing what was being said. We boys were taught to, from the cradle almost, and Father felt left out sometimes.

'This whole damned household had their mind set to foreign and no one can flip that switch for me,' he used to fume, and then we boys would throw ourselves at him and tell him he was better than conjugating anytime. That always made him smile.

Two months before I met Peter, my brother George, who was twelve, left to join my brother Gregory at boarding school. Not Eton, though. It seems, reading some stories, that Eton is the only school worthy of mention. No, my brothers went to Rugby, which seems fitting, at least for Gregory. Gregory was fourteen, then, and he was the best of us at sports. Partly age and that advantage, but also he was graceful, when we played. We went a few times, to see him play football (Which had not yet become Rugby, at least not technically) at school. He was the best, no question.

George, on the other hand, was scholarly. Studious. He looked like our Uncle Nicholas in pictures, with the same Conner dark curls and round little spectacles. He used to spend hours penned in our father's library, reading through all the books. Once, when just we two were talking (I can only imagine because Gregory had rounded all the others into some mischief or another) I asked him what he meant to do, when he was all grown up.

"Oh, I don't know, Kit." That was what they called me, Kit, and I called him Georgie. "Sometimes I feel as though I can never grow up. There are still so many things I've yet to do!"

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know, Kit." It pleased me to hear him say this twice in a row, because the motto amongst us boys was 'Georgie always knows'. And he had just told me twice he hadn't a clue! "Read, I suppose."

"But you read everything!"

"Not everything, Kit. It shall be a very long time before I read everything. I imagine I will be terribly old, by then."

"Is that why people must grow up, Georgie? Because they need such a long time for things?"

"I think, Kit, that people must grow up because they have so much to experience that it cannot be crammed into such a small skull." Georgie seemed pleased with that answer, for he said it again, then wrote it in his little notebook.

Georgie went on to become an author, when I left. I hope that one day, when I was gone and when Peter Pan was suddenly the toast of London, I hope Georgie went out and picked up a ticket and saw it, and maybe thought of me and of our conversation. Maybe took some comfort in the fact that, though I was a Lost Boy, I was not truly lost. But Georgie probably walked right past any opportunity. He probably supposed himself too old.

I believe, if Georgie had not been quite so young, he might have written Peter Pan. But then, I believe that any child, were there writing capabilities not quite up to snuff, migh have written Peter Pan.

Of all my brothers, I was closest to my match, of course. To Charley. I was a very quiet baby, by nature. I suppose because I was third, and I somehow sensed that, if I gave my mother a hard time she might not have the fourth. But Charley came along, and it was like he was simply holding my mischief for me, and then he transferred it. But being a baby has an impact on you, and so in my childhood I would sometimes stay quiet and trade Charley's wild antics for a taste of Georgie's reason. But in the end, it was always us two, Kit and Charley forever.

If Georgie could have written Peter Pan, Charley could have been him. In fact, in some ways he is him. Because Charley, like Peter, will never grow up. But Charley, not like Peter, is dead.

I guess he isn't him after all.

When I was just short of ten, Charley and I were having a sword fight over the Serpentine bridge when Charley suddenly climbed up onto the railing, thrust his sword in the air, and, with an almighty war cry, jumped.

I was petrified immediately, afraid he would meet some mishap on the way down. He could swim like a fish, Charley, so I wasn't worried about that, but I was sure he would hit his head on something and drown.

I saw him hit the water and I waited, frozen with shock and terror, for six seconds. Then I saw his head break the surface and I heard his laugh, so I started to laugh too.

"Charley, you goose, you frightened me!"

"And the ducks, it would seem!" he shouted back, for a small duck family had started to quack and flap it's wings the second Charley hit the water. They were still at it when Mamselle came by and started to scream.

"Charles, vous garcon vilain ! Comment défi vous haut sale vos vêtements intéressants ! Sorti là, maintenant !" She was yelling, as always when she got upset, in fast, angry French and stalking our way with my littlest brothers, Johnnie and Joseph. Georgie and Gregory were at school.

When she yelled at you in French, you answered in French or not at all. Charley was, as she yelled, swimming frantically to the other side of the Serpentine, to give her some time to cool off. "Mamselle, il juste—"

"Il juste, il juste! Tranquillité, Christopher ! Comment défi vous, Charles, après que toute la difficulté votre maman intervienne pour vous habiller des garçons bien?"

She yelled her head off the whole way home, then shut me and Charley in the nursery in front of a roaring fire. Charley was sneezing, from his damp journey, I supposed, and smiling.

"What do you have to smile about?" I asked nastily. He had gotten me locked in as well, and Ella, the cook, was making my favorite desert tonight and I doubted I would get to sample any of it. "What's so funny to you?"

And then, in quiet tones, he explained. About flying, about soaring through the air with nothing to catch you and still feeling safe.

"You could have died, you know. If you'd hit the water wrong, you could have cracked your neck in two."

"I wouldn't have. There was someone there, Kit. He wouldn't have let me fall, never."

"Who?" I asked, curious despite myself. "God?"

"No. A boy. He was there, next to me. He'd have caught me before I fell, if he'd thought I would die."

I didn't believe him, then, but when I saw Peter Pan, I did. I knew Peter was the boy. But then, after I knew Peter better, I knew that Peter would never have caught my brother, even if he knew. Death never seemed real to Peter like it did to the rest of us. Death was always Peter Pan's great adventure. But to the rest of us, it wasn't very funny.

Charley was rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital two days later, with pnuemonia and a very high fever. He had refused, on principal, to change to new, dry clothes and had shivered all through the night, until Mamselle insisted he change.

He just kept on shivering and shivering until he shivered away.

Father was heart broken. Though he never said it, we knew that Gregory and Charley were his mimics, his doubles, and we knew he loved them just a bit more for that. Charley's death devastated him, and Mama too. Mamselle was wailing always, and little Johnnie, our smallest family member, kept asking for 'my Chally-pal,' which was his three year old name for Charley. Georgie and Gregory were being called home immediately, for the funeral, and I was left alone, mainly.

I left the house that day through the kitchen. Ella was wiping down the counter again and again, and Minnie and Tessie, our maids, were sitting with Kirk, the gardener, and talking quietly. It was quite easy to sneak past all of them and run, with all my might, to the Serpentine.

I suppose jumping from a bridge is an equivalent to falling out of a pram. I stood there for what seemed like hours, wondering how I could live when Charley could not. I decided, in the end, that if Charley could not grow up and be a man, neither would I.

And I jumped.

Somehow, in jumping, I had missed both the bridge and the lake and the shore, missed any seeable thing and fallen, with a gentle thump, onto Neverland's sandy shores.

I lay there for a while, wondering if this was Heaven (because I was always under the assumption that heaven had clouds in it, and all I saw was blue sky and yellow sand and a lining of very queer green trees along the edge of the beach) and, if it was Heaven, whether Charley was here waiting.

After thinking that, I got up and I started to explore. It was fiercely hot then, and I quickly shed my shoes and stockings and jacket. I was in the process of rolling up my sleeves when I saw a small, diry face peering at me from the top of the tree.

"Charley?" I yelled, but the child landed and gave me a measuring stare. He was burned to a crisp, it seemed, far too brown to be Charley. His hair was a fair, shocking white blonde, in contrast, and he had cocked his head to the side, looking at me.

"Hello," he said, then he spat a great distance. Charley would have been impressed, but I was far too nervous.

"Please," I said, "Is my brother here? His name is Charley, he's dark and pale like me—"

The boy was shaking his head. He scratched the back of his left leg with his right foot. "Is he dead?" the boy asked frankly, then spat again, as if trying to re-impress me.

I nodded, and the boy shrugged. "Then he ain't here. This ain't Heaven or nuthin'."

"What is it, then?"

"Neverland."

I'd never heard the name before in my life, but it sounded warm, like little bells chiming in my ear. I repeated it.

"Neverland."

The boy nodded, looking pleased. "Norm'ly takes some boys a while to 'cept it. You got it, though." He spat again, then came forward with a tanned, dirty hand outstretched. "I'm Blackie."

"How do you do. Christopher."

The boy smiled, suddenly, a flash of very white, crooked teeth against his dark skin. "Oh, not for long," he said. He looked at me for a minute, that measuring glance, and I knew he probably thought I was some kind of sissy, and I knew Charley wouldn't want this silly boy to think I was a sissy. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I spat, real far, right past him.

He smiled and took me to the Tree Fort.


	3. Stars and the Illegal Usage of Toffee

I lost my shoes and stockings somewhere in the endless journey that started as I followed Blackie over a terrain of dirt, rocks, and tree roots. He spat the entire time, until I asked him why. Then he hocked a big one and said, very authoritatively for a nine year old, 'Mucus problems.'

He led me up and down and over damn near everything on the island. By the end of it, we had gone so deep into the queer trees that I no longer knew how to get back to the beach. But, I decided that didn't really matter, did it, when I had no idea how to get from the beach to the Serpentine and then back home. It didn't matter, not to know where I was, when no one knew where Charley was. Perhaps, I thought, not even Charley.

Blackie started to talk to me, warn me a bit. "My names not really Blackie. I don't really like the name Blackie. D'you? I think it's dull."

"Oh, extremely," I said without thinking as I struggled to keep up. London and my well ordered home had not prepared me for a long jaunt across a jungle.

"Yeah. It aint the worst, though. When I came, there was a boy named Fiddle-Faddle. Can you believe it?" Only when Blackie said it, it sounded like 'Kin yeh buleevet?' His accent made him special, different from most of the people I had ever met. "Fiddle-Faddle. And all because he marched up to Peter and said 'My name is Alan Terrence Fenwick-Pryce, how do you do.' Then Peter got angry, because he hates for people to have longer names then him. So he started to mimic him, Fenwick-Pryce, a'cause he had the most hoity toity way of speakin'. Worse than you, even. So he hadda be called Fiddle-Faddle for the rest of his whole damn life."

"What's your real name, then?"

"Bernard Black. Bernie. A lot of the boys come young you know, too young to know their names, and Peter names them. But then there's a few, like us, and we get named to. To put us in our place."

"Is Peter a tyrant, then?"

"No, not at all! He's the best, the best of all, I swear. He's the best there is at everything, at keeping out pirates and catchin' rabbits and raising the Lost Boys and—he's good at everything, and he's boss. That's how it goes here, and you better not mess with it, a'cause we'll beat you up pretty bad." In Blackie's accent, it sounded like 'beatya up pity bud.'

"Will he let me stay?"

"Ain't no place for you to go, 'cept the pirates. And not nobody wants to go there."

"Why?"

"A'cause they're pirates, and they ain't no good." He spat again, this time in seeming disgust. "Peter hates pirates."

"Me too," I said, and then I spat, rather pathetically. Blackie just grinned and led me deeper and deeper. When I thought I couldn't go another step, that's when Blackie changed direction and, with practiced ease, started grabbing at odd tree branches and sometimes, it seemed, turned himself over midair and snatching impossibly high branches. It took everything I had to keep following him.

We stopped climbing when it started to get dark. I could tell immediately we were there. It was a fortress in the sky, a magnificent, towering house made of driftwood and leaves and tree branches. Sea glass and pretty rocks filled every possible crack, and a rough door was made from the side of what I guessed was a wrecked ship. It had a bunch of planks nailed over it, on which phrases like 'KEEP OWT! NO GURLS! NO PEYERATES!' were written in big, black, smudgy letters.

Blackie grinned at me, and I noticed for the first time that he was missing two of his front teeth.

"Welcome to the Tree Fort."

There was a bell, like the kind they have on ships to signify the end of watches. A long, knotted, dirty string was tied to it, and at the end of the string was a root that vaugely resembled a spoon. Blackie grabbed up the root and started beating on the bell and yelling at the top of his lungs.

"LOST BOYS, LOST BOYS, WE GOT A NEW 'UN! LOST BOYS, LOST BOYS, C'MERE!"

One of the planks slid to the side and a small brown eye peeked out.

"Peter ain't here, so's ya gotta say the password," the little boy lisped. "Peter says that if we was to let someone in who din't say the password, he could be a pirate or an Injun or an, uhm—"

"An enemy of the state," an older voice said. A bespectacled face appeared next to the little boy.

"So, say the password and you can come in. It's the same password as always," the little boy said, and then he yelped as an unseen Lost Boy thumped him on the head.

"What's the point in tellin' 'em that, Cub? Now he don't even hafta guess!"

"Aw, stuff it, Sweets, he knew it anyway!"

"What if he's a Tom Poster?" the boy roared back.

"It's imposter, dumb-head!"

"Don't call me dumb-head, mud for brains!"

"Blackie, say the password, quick, Sweets is hitting me!"

Blackie knocked on the door three times, then spat on his hand and pressed it against the door.

"If I say a word 'gainst this utmost secret and special brotherhood may all my parts fall off," he said solemly, and waited as the planks all slid back into place and there was a great scuffle behind the door trying to pull the door open.

"Fiddle-Faddle read it in a book," Blackie explained, and the door suddenly fell in to the dimly lit tree fort.

The lights showed four boys, all pushing, shoving, biting and yelling for Blackie's attention and yelling their side of the story. They continued to yell and fight as Blackie shoved his way into the room, leading me toward a battered barrel that seemed to be acting as a table.

The littlest boy was the first to stop yelling and take notice of me. He was a cute thing, barely older than my littlest brother, Johnnie, but with a thick layer of grime all over his body. He had gotten his hands on some sort of war paint and his hands were coated with a vivid green paint, along with matching palm prints on his cheeks and the sleeves of his tattered shirt, as if he had slammed his hands in the paint and then hugged himself. He had the cutest pair of front teeth I had ever seen, with a slight gap to them. His hair was the straightest, blondest hair I had ever seen, and his brown eyes looked like my father's hunting hound, Blue's, puppies eyes. He was adorable.

"Look, we've a new friend!" he yelled excitedly, and the other boys all ceased their fighting to gape at me. Even without my shoes and stockings and my muddy feet and I could tell, by putting a hand to my hair, that the oil Mamselle put on it had worn off in the climate and it was curly as ever and full of leaves and twigs, even with all those things I still looked like a little lord compared to them. I saw one of them, or perhaps a shadow, run up and nimbly disappear, so quickly I thought I had imagined it.

"Who's the toff?" one of the boys asked after a moment, jolting me out of my imaginings. He spat with every word he said, for he had a large wad of taffy shoved in one cheek.

"This's Kit. He's the latest." Blackie was rummaging through a shelf that seemed to hold large boxes of necessities, and he pulled out an apple and tossed it to me.

The littlest boy was shrieking with laughter. "But he's not a baby! He wouldn't even fit in a pram, would he, Blackie?"

"Not yer conventional pram, no, but there's several ways to fall outta a pram, eh?" Blackie touseled the boys hair and hoisted him in the air, placing him onto his shoulders. "This is Cubby. Cub, say hello to Kit."

The boy, who was still giggling, waved a grubby hand shyly and said "Hello to Kit," which set him of on another set of giggles.

He reminded me a little of Charley, when Charley was that age, so I swept into one of the awfully formal bows I'd seen Father give to his business partners. He laughed so hard he tumbled off of Blackie's shoulders and straight into my arms.

"Oof! You're a heavy one, aren't you?"

"I'm not heavy, I'm five!"

"Good for you." I placed his down and caught eyes with the taffy chewer. He sneered at me, then extended a hand and spat into it.

"Sweets," he grunted, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn't demanding toffee, but introducing himself. I shook his hand gingerly, for his spit was vaugely pink and sticky from the candy in his mouth, and he chuckled nastily.

The other boy I had seen through the door, the one with the glasses, came forward next. I was slightly surprised because I had only seen a glimpse of one glassses lens, and they looked in good repair, so I had assumed he was another new arrival. However, what I saw before me was another boy, slightly taller than me, with the wildest, most tangled red hair I had ever seen. He had little green hand prints on his shoulders, so I assumed Cubby had caught him with his dirty hands. He had no shirt, only a pair of long, baggy shorts. His glasses consisted of a pair of glasses with one good lens and one shattered lens, so he squinted at everything, and the glasses were held to his head by a tattered piece of twine.

"That's Bug Eye—"

"Call me Bug," the boy said, shaking my hand and wrinkling his own nose as he realized that Sweets had shook before him. "Urgh, Sweets, you've slobbered everywhere and it's all sticky!" he whined, running over and wiping his hand onto Sweet's shirt. Sweets bellowed and the two immediately started to tussle. Cubby jumped back into my arms, cheering for whoever seemed to be winning at the time and whistling through his adorable teeth. Sweets managed to push Bug into Blackie, and Blackie growled and threw Bug back at Sweets. At first I was a little horrified. They were going at each other viciously and the whole tree fort was shaking with their efforts. I clutched at Cubby to make sure he didn't leap into the fray, as I was sure a boy of his small stature would be trampled. He turned and grinned at me.

"Blackie's always best at play fighting, int you Blackie!"

Blackie let out a triumphant whoop as an answer, and Bug and Sweets seemed to declare a sort of truce.

"He's not best, I am!" the two yelled in a playful, angry unison, and they both jumped Blackie. Cubby let out a fierce Indian war cry and leapt from my hands to the top of the pile, and I finally saw it for what it was: a game.

I smiled, a little hesitantly, and I sat down on a gnarled old tree bump that grew out of the floor in the perfect place to be head of the table. I watched carefully, making sure Cubby didn't get in over his head, but then I was simply content to look at my new surroundings.

Eveerything was the tree. The chairs, the walls, little bits of greenery that dropped down like a canopy to form the roof. These boys had wished for a home, and it seemed the tree had provided. There was a little rope ladder dangling from a man-made hole in the ceiling, and I went to it slowly and yelled, still staring at the hole, where it led.

"To the—aghhh, Sweets, don't put toffee in my hair, you bugger! It leds up to the roof, Kit—Bugs, get off Cubby, I don't think he can breathe – why else would his face be bright red, stupid?—Where you'll sleep, probabl—Sweets, don't you dare throw those sodding little jawbreakerss at me, I'll crack your head in two, you sod!"

Figuring that I would probably be safer up there anyway, I pulled myself up onto the ladder and quickly climbed to the top.

Once, when I was very small, Father and Mama had taken Greory, Georgie, and I (Charley was too little and the very littles hadn't even been born yet) on a boat that took you round the Thames at night. I don't remember much of it (save that Georgie got boat sick all over Papa's umbrella), but I remember thinking the stars seemed closer there than they had ever seemed anywhere.

I remember my Papa lifting me into the air and saying 'Aren't they beautiful, Christopher? Stars are magical, you know. And sometimes, if you wish hard enough, they come down to you and lift you up into their arms and take you round the whole world. What an adventure, eh, Christopher?' and I remember my little hand reaching, stretching, as I wished with all my heart for the stars to come. I jumped up and down the whole rest of the trip, hoping that the star would pick me to take into it's wonderful arms. Stars would have a special warmth, I knew, like silver sunshine and electricity tingling all up and down you, in a good way.

That's what the stars in Neverland are like.

I had quite forgotten, at this point, the shadow that had fled the room or the fact I had originally seen four boys in the room. I was so busy looking at the stars to notice that a boy had crept up behind me, and when he tapped me on the shoulder I jumped so high I felt as though I could grab the stars. I made a feeble effort at concealing my shock and I squinted at the boy in front of me.

He was tall, that much I could tell. Tall and lanky, but his shoulders seemed odd, lumpy somehow. He had the longest hair I had ever seen on a boy, like a pirate running in a pigtail down his back. His faced was hidden in shadow, and he hadn't yet said a word.

"So," he whispered, and there was something not quite right about his voice, something off, but he kept talking and I pushed that thought aside for a moment; "So," he repeated, and he licked his lips.

"So what?" I demanded, rather braver than I felt.

"So," the boy said at last, squinting at me as much as I was at him. "I suppose you're to replace me now, aren't you?"


End file.
